This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Mother Teresa’s first miracle on the way to sainthood

The Albanian nun will be canonized Sunday at the Vatican. In 2002, the case of a cured woman became the first milestone to sainthood.

Monica Besra, who is from a tribal community in eastern India, was so sick she could barely walk when nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, helped her to a small prayer room one day in 1998.
(The Washington Post)

By Annie GowenThe Washington Post

Sat., Sept. 3, 2016

NAKOR, INDIA—The story of her surprising cure has been carved and softened by years, but Monica Besra can still recite it by heart.

Besra, who is from a tribal community in eastern India, was so sick she could barely walk when nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, helped her to a small prayer room one day in 1998.

She paused by a photo of the nun and suddenly felt a “blinding light” emanating from the portrait, which passed through her body. Later, other nuns pressed a religious medal on her belly, swollen from a tumour, and prayed over Besra as she lay in bed.

She says she awoke at 1 a.m., her body feeling lighter, the tumour seemingly gone.

“I was so happy at that moment I wanted to tell everyone: I am cured,” Besra recalled Wednesday during an interview at her home.

Article Continued Below

In 2002, the Vatican certified Besra’s case as a “miracle,” the first milestone in the two-step journey to sainthood for Mother Teresa of Kolkata, the Albanian nun who will be canonized Sunday at the Vatican.

Mother Teresa was considered a living saint by many believers during her lifetime, but Besra’s story has always been treated with skepticism in India, because doctors and the state health minister debunked it at the time.

They have long maintained that Besra had been suffering from a cyst, not a cancerous tumour. The doctors have said she recovered after she received tuberculosis treatment for several months at a government hospital in Balurghat, about 430 kilometres north of the city where Mother Teresa spent decades ministering to the destitute and dying.

“I’ve said several times that she was cured by the treatment, and nothing has happened,” one of the doctors involved, Ranjan Mustafi, said in a brief telephone interview.

Catholic Bishop Salvatore Lobo, who chaired the local committee that investigated Besra’s case for the Vatican, said they repeatedly asked Mustafi and the two others to testify, but they never appeared. Meanwhile, he said, several other doctors involved in her treatment confirmed Besra’s version of events. He declined to provide their names.

“She was very sick, and she had a tumour and that tumour was cured after the intercession of Mother Teresa,” he said. “That is what is believed and those are the facts.”

Prabir Ghosh, the president of the Science and Rationalists’ Society of India, based in Kolkata called the case “false” and said that encouraging stories of mystical healings could be detrimental to public health.

Besra, who is now about 50 years old, was flown by the Missionaries of Charity to attend Mother Teresa’s beatification in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in 2003, presided over by an ailing Pope John Paul II. She will not be attending Sunday’s canonization.

Her family had endured financial hardship and long separations during her protracted illness, so her husband, Selku Murmu, 60, said he was relieved when Besra recovered so quickly. Although he once told reporters he believed his wife recovered after medical treatment, he now says he was misquoted.

“It happened due to the blessings of Mother Teresa,” he said. “She prayed a long time to her. I went to many doctors and she was not getting well. After that day she was cured.”

Besra has been healthy since her illness, and says she still doesn’t quite understand the significance of what the Catholic Church thinks happened to her.

“I can’t explain why was I was chosen,” Besra said. “I’m normal — just like other people.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com